


A Singing Flame Through Space

by cosmogyrals



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3264770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyrals/pseuds/cosmogyrals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reinterpretations of several scenes throughout Series 8 (plus a few additional scenes) - basically, what it might be like with daemons added in. Includes excerpts from Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Listen, and Death in Heaven. Twelve/Clara if you squint, but probably more gen than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Singing Flame Through Space

**Author's Note:**

> I might have taken some creative liberties with scenes taken directly from the show; the dialogue doesn't always match up exactly with the original. Originally written as part of NaNoWriMo 2014, just after the end of S8. The title comes from [this poem](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/souls-4/).

The entire TARDIS shuddered as the time rotor rose and fell; Clara clung desperately to the console, Eirian wrapped around her ankles. She desperately needed her daemon's physical comfort right now – she wasn't as worried about the fact that they were crashing (because she was used to the Doctor's piloting skills) as she was about the fact that her best friend had suddenly _changed_ right in front of her, the Doctor she'd known – the Doctor she'd loved – becoming an old man. Not the same old man she'd returned to on Trenzalore, but one who sounded distinctly Scottish and kept going on about his kidneys being the wrong colour.

She knew about regeneration, of course. How could she not, having jumped into the Doctor's timeline and scattering herself into thousands of echoes throughout time and space? But she'd been focused on saving him, and so she'd never actually witnessed the process of regeneration itself. She didn't know how it worked, and she didn't really know what this new man might be like. 

Clara looked to Thalassia for help, but she couldn't see the Doctor's daemon; she assumed she was hidden somewhere on the other side of the console, maybe trying to cling to the Doctor the way Eirian was pressing against her. His lithe body was in between her legs, his head resting on one foot while his thick tail wrapped around the opposite ankle. Clara wanted to pick the otter up, but she desperately needed her hands to keep her balance.

Finally, with a great crashing noise, the TARDIS settled, lurching to a rough stop, and the new Doctor went to see where they were. Clara took the opportunity to crouch down and have a whispered conference with Eirian.

"Where do you think we are?" she asked, peering back up over the console. She tried to look at the displays, but she'd never been able to make head or tail of them. "Not in the prehistoric era still, I hope." They'd managed to briefly land on prehistoric Earth, but had taken off again – despite the new Doctor's protests that he didn't know how to fly the TARDIS – after they'd got on the wrong side of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

"Earth, hopefully. London, if we're even luckier." Eirian's whiskers twitched as he tried to sniff the air. 

"That could've _been_ London millions of years ago!" Clara protested. "And now we could just as well be millions of years in the future, for all the good it'll do us."

"Better question: what are we going to do with him?"

Clara fell silent. She didn't know the answer to that question; she'd been hoping thus far that the Doctor would somehow...fix himself, that everything would straighten out and go back to normal. She'd even hoped that _her_ Doctor would come back – that he'd start glowing again, change, and admit that he'd made a mistake. There was a stranger in his clothes, flying his ship, and she didn't know what to do about it.

"Same thing we always do," she told Eirian, straightening up and attempting to brush her skirt off (though she suspected it was something like a lost cause by now). "Take care of him. Save him from himself, if we have to." She crossed over to the door, where she could hear the Doctor conversing outside. She could see the glint of water through the door, the familiar structure of Parliament rising over the Thames, and thanked her lucky stars that they were at least close to the right time.

"-the not me one, the asking questions one," she heard the Doctor say.

"Clara," she sighed as she stepped through the door, Eirian close on her heels. Thankfully, Jenny, Vastra, and Strax were standing with the Doctor; if anyone was likely to be able to help, it was them.

"Might be, might not. It's a lottery." The Doctor shrugged, and a strange daemon by his side flickered through forms – a large blue-winged butterfly, a gangly horse, and an otter, though this last was rather larger than Eirian – a sea otter to his river otter.

"Is that Thalassia?" She directed her question to Eirian in a low voice, since nobody else seemed inclined to take any notice of her. Vastra's oversized dragonfly daemon was perched on her shoulder, as he was wont to do outside of the home; Vastra had explained to her that he found it difficult to fly in the atmosphere of the Victorian era.

(Clara had wondered more about how a dragonfly that had a wingspan of three feet went unnoticed in the streets of London – but Vastra managed, so she supposed Serik did as well.)

"She's changing shape." Eirian sounded just as confused as Clara felt. "She can't _do_ that; she's meant to be settled."

"Well, she doesn't seem very settled to me," Clara muttered. The daemon went through a few forms that were distinctly alien, including one with far too many tentacles, one that looked like a combination between a cat and a houseplant, and one that resembled the dog-like creature by Strax's side: mostly canine, but with a large, wedge-shaped head, floppy ears, and short-cropped liver-coloured fur. She was nearly as erratic as the Doctor; Clara had seen him manic before – hell, manic was part of his daily routine sometimes – but never like this. She hoped it wouldn't last, and she was afraid of what she would do if it did.

And then he simply flopped over, like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been cut. Clara gasped, rushing to his side and crouching in the mud. "What do we do?" she asked, looking up at Vastra and Jenny. Eirian nosed Thalassia, currently just as unconscious, and thankfully in a bird form that was easy enough for the otter to push onto the Doctor's chest – a peregrine falcon, like Jenny's daemon.

"Take him back to the house so he can recuperate," Vastra said, her expression unreadable. "Regeneration sickness can be severe, but it will pass, in time. The Doctor's condition will stabilise; all that remains to be seen is what sort of man he will become."

"And keep all hats, scarves, and decorative vegetables away from him," Serik added sotto voce. 

 

Though Clara still felt entirely adrift, she believed Vastra when she said that there was nothing they could do for the Doctor but wait. She was nearly sick with worry, her stomach tying itself into knots as she sipped tea with the Silurian woman in the conservatory. Here, Serik found it easier to fly; Vastra had created an atmosphere that she claimed was more like the days of her youth. The air was rich and humid, and sweat dripped down Clara's back. She didn't know how the other two women managed it in full Victorian dress (although she reckoned that Vastra was probably cold-blooded, and therefore preferred her surroundings to be as warm as possible). She envied Eirian, who was splashing in the fountain a few feet away – although he'd stopped briefly while the two women had argued, placing his paws on the rim as he studied both Clara and Vastra. When Clara lost her temper, he was often the one who urged her to cool down, but he hadn't interrupted this time, opting simply to observe. 

"The Doctor is lost in the ruin of himself," Vastra told Clara, "and it is up to us to bring him home."

It was up to _her_ , Clara thought. She'd done it before, when she'd jumped into his timeline, and she would do whatever he needed her to do this time. And then- well, she wasn't sure what would happen when he was better. Maybe he wouldn't need her anymore; maybe he wouldn't even want her anymore. There was no real way of knowing, not yet.

"And what about his daemon?" she asked.

"What about her?" Serik settled on the top of the chair behind Vastra, his carapace gleaming a jewel-toned sapphire blue in the gaslight. 

"She was changing. Daemons don't do that," Clara insisted. "Not once they've settled." 

"He's a new man." Vastra seemed entirely unperturbed by this. "Why shouldn't he have a new daemon as well? Thalassia belonged to the previous him; her form no longer expresses who he is. She must find herself, just as the Doctor must discover who he is."

"But he's _old_."

"I thought we'd got past that point." Though Vastra didn't have eyebrows, Clara thought she would have been raising them if she had, simply judging by her tone of voice. She was just glad the Silurian wasn't treating her like a stranger again. "No matter how he looks on the outside, he is newborn on the inside. A child in the body of an adult. Once he settles, she will as well."

At least the Doctor's daemon wasn't quite as manic as he was, Clara thought; she changed shapes rapidly, refusing to stay in one form for longer than a few minutes, but she didn't _act_ like he did (although she had acquired a Scottish accent as well). Of course, Thalassia had always been the rational one of the pair – not that it was exactly difficult to be more rational than the Doctor. 

Finally tired of the fountain, Eirian came over to the table, standing up on his hind legs to grasp a sandwich in his forepaws and nibble at it. "I liked it when she was an otter," he offered. "Shows excellent taste on her part."

Clara rolled her eyes at her daemon, while Jenny hid a smile behind her hand. "It's _copying_ ," she huffed. "The Doctor can't copy me."

"Now you sound like one of your students." He sniffed at the sandwiches, trying to figure out which ones might contain some sort of fish. Vastra reached out and delicately turned the platter so that the sandwiches with potted salmon were in front of him, and he seized another sandwich, then dropped back down to the floor with his prize. Clara eyed the sandwiches with suspicion, then chose a cucumber sandwich, feeling it was the safer option. Eirian was the one who liked seafood; she preferred to stay far away from fish.

"What is it you humans say? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Vastra shrugged. "But I think she'll settle as something different. The Doctor, after all, prides himself on being unique in every regeneration."

 

As Clara stepped into the TARDIS, the first thing she noticed was the console room. "You've redecorated," she remarked, trying to keep her expression neutral. She still wasn't sure how she felt about this new Doctor.

He was standing in front of the console, thankfully wearing new clothes – ones that didn't smell like the streets of Victorian London. He was clad in a simple navy blue jacket over a white shirt, with trousers of the same colour and black boots, no sort of neckwear (or hat) anywhere in sight. At his feet was his daemon, in the form of a badger.

_Does that mean he's a Hufflepuff now?_ Clara wondered for one absurd moment, then disregarded the thought as nonsense. (She was fairly certain the Sorting Hat would burst into flames if it were placed on the Doctor's head.) 

"Do you like it?" he asked, trying to pretend as if the answer didn't really matter to him. "Gormlaith's the one who suggested the bookshelves; I think they're a nice touch."

"Gormlaith?" Clara frowned, looking at the Doctor's daemon.

"New regeneration," she explained, "new name. When it comes to the one I go by, at least. I felt like being a bit more Scottish, you see."

"The only way the pair of you could be even more Scottish would be if you ran around in a kilt," Clara pointed out tartly. "Which is not a suggestion, by the way. Definitely not anything like a suggestion." She knew her Doctor would have got ideas from something like that, but she wasn't sure about this one. He seemed steadier to her, less likely to do things on a whim – but she didn't know him yet, not really. 

"No kilts," the Doctor agreed. "Haven't got the legs for it, and neither does she."

"Though," Gormlaith added, "I could sport a rather fetching tam, I think."

"No tams," Clara said firmly. She was, she thought, probably lucky that Thalassia hadn't worn a fez all the time. "If Eirian doesn't get to wear hats, neither do you."

"I'd rather wear a scarf," Eirian offered. "I think I'd look darling in a scarf."

Clara gave her daemon a look, crossing her arms over her chest. It was the sort of look that translated roughly as 'you're meant to be on _my_ side here', and one that she gave him quite a lot when it came to conversations with the Doctor. (At least one thing hadn't changed with the Doctor's new face.) 

"No scarves." The Doctor made a face. "Scarves are ridiculous. Although I imagine they might look better on you than on me."

"If we can get off the topic of accessorising." Clara cleared her throat pointedly. "Are we still-" She hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase what she wanted to say.

"Still what?"

She thought back to the argument that she and Vastra had had about the Doctor's new face, how Vastra had accused her of caring what the Doctor looked like. She'd loved him before he'd regenerated, true, but not because of his face – because of who he was. He wasn't the man she knew anymore, that much was obvious, but what remained to be seen was how much was the same.

"Still travelling," she finished.

"If you like." He regarded her with a steady gaze, his eyes a piercing blue. "But, Clara, I think we ought to get one thing straight: I'm not your boyfriend."

She was taken aback by his bluntness, though she tried not to let it show on her face. "I never said you were," she stammered, her heart racing in her chest.

"I never said it was your mistake."

Clara stooped down to pick up Eirian, suddenly needing to feel the reassuring weight of him in her arms. She couldn't bring herself to meet the Doctor's eyes any longer; she was afraid she was blushing furiously.

And then her phone rang.

"Better get that," the Doctor said crisply. "Might be your boyfriend."

 

***

 

"Why don't Daleks have daemons?" Clara and the Doctor sat together on the steps in the console room. Eirian was curled in her lap, and Clara found herself stroking her daemon's fur. She couldn't imagine being without one, but she hadn't seen any sign of a daemon living in Rusty's shell with him.

"Ah, the sticky morass of philosophy," the Doctor sighed. "The most common question of the ages: what is a daemon, and what separates those who have one from those who don't? Humans have them; apes do not. But it's not just a simple genetic switch – it's the fuzzy grey area that separates man from beast. The religious might claim that it's a matter of having a _soul_."

"Is it?" Clara asked. It wasn't a matter of humanity, as she'd learnt; if it was, then the Doctor himself wouldn't have a daemon, let alone all the other aliens she'd met. The Daleks were the first sentient species she'd come across without them.

"Depends on how you define a soul in the first place. A terribly woolly subject, theology. Everyone has their own opinion on things, and there's no right or wrong answer." 

"You don't think Daleks have souls, though." That much was obvious. The Doctor hated the Daleks; she'd seen the proof of that, the unflinching prejudice, the _fear_ of what a race like the Daleks could do without the encumbrance of morals. The Doctor didn't just hate the Daleks, he was terrified of them – almost as terrified as he was of becoming like them.

He was silent for a long moment. "The Daleks were created as the perfect soldiers, as the final solution in a war that had destroyed countless generations of lives on Skaro. Long before that, in his quest to develop the ultimate weapon, Davros started experimenting with separation – severing the bond between daemon and person."

Eirian recoiled in Clara's arms, pressing closer to her for comfort; Clara was too shocked to react. She'd never heard of anything like it before, and it was quite possibly the most revolting concept she'd ever been introduced to. "But- you can't live without a daemon."

"The earliest experiments died from shock immediately thereafter, but Davros eventually figured out how to keep his subjects alive." The Doctor's tone was detached as he related the story, the clinical voice of a doctor talking about the horrors of an epidemic.

"He did it to himself eventually," Gormlaith added. "Not the full separation, but a small cut. When we met him, his daemon was...subdued. She perched on his shoulder, but I only saw her move once or twice, and I never heard her speak. And then- he was killed by the Daleks, and she didn't come back when he was resurrected."

"The Daleks are the end result of not just genetic tinkering, but radioactive mutation as well." The Doctor picked the thread of the story up again. "I said it wasn't due to a genetic switch – well, it's not just _one_ genetic switch, a marker located on a single gene. Somehow, with the combination of his experiments in cutting, then exposing those poor people to the radiation that had made Skaro virtually uninhabitable by the millennia of war, Davros accelerated their evolution, creating the Daleks – a race without daemons."

"A race without compassion," Gormlaith chimed in. "Without morals, without emotions. Created only to become the supreme lifeform in the universe, and to destroy everything else."

"So, yes, Clara, a race without souls," the Doctor finished. 

"And what if one of them _did_ have one?" She frowned thoughtfully. "What if you could have given Rusty a soul?"

"Oh, we're getting into theology again," he groaned. "I can't stand theology, especially from humans – nothing personal, mind you, it's just that your view of the universe doesn't quite stand up to the real thing." 

" _Doctor_." She hated it when he ignored her questions. Clara thought that it was a perfectly legitimate thing to ask, and that his irrational hatred of the Daleks was clouding his opinion again.

"It would be like giving someone who'd undergone separation a stuffed toy and telling them it was a daemon," Gormlaith said. "It's not, and it can't be. There's nothing there, and you can't create something from nothing."

"Daleks are clones with very few genetic differences," the Doctor explained. "There's no room for that much variation. Like the Sontarans – each clone batch has the same daemon, you know. Not that form is genetic, either, but-"

"-that's getting into philosophy _and_ sociology," Gormlaith interrupted. "There's nothing scientific about it: they all have the same genetic template, the same upbringing. They mature rapidly, and their daemons settle quickly. Sontarans are unique; there's no other race quite like them in that respect."

"And in the Daleks, it takes the form of having no daemon at all," he finished. "It's like a race with only one arm: they can't have two arms because they're designed to only have one."

"Or, in the case of Time Lords," Clara remarked wryly, "an inability to believe in the infinite possibilities of the universe, even when they would otherwise accept that anything could happen."

Gormlaith put her whiskers forward, looking amused. "I would call that a psychological blind spot, actually, rather than a genetic defect. Though there is an argument for both."

"You're ganging up on me again," the Doctor huffed indignantly.

"You deserve it for that remark you made about my hips earlier!" Clara let him change the topic; she wasn't sure how much she could argue her point when it was obvious that the Doctor would never change his mind on the subject. It made her a little sad; no matter how hard he tried to be a good man, she wasn't sure he entirely could be where the Daleks were concerned. He'd tried his hardest to redeem Rusty, true, but his spirit had been crushed again when all of his hard work had simply produced a Dalek that was only interested in killing other Daleks. He'd let the Dalek see into his soul, and murderous hatred had been the result. Clara wondered how much of himself this new Doctor hid from her. He scared her sometimes, and she worried that maybe, in the end, her faith would be the only thing keeping him good.

 

***

 

Clara took the box of plastic soldiers and the box of plastic animals, alternating one with the other as she set them in a ring around Rupert's bed. Soldiers and their daemons, one by one, guarding Rupert and keeping him safe from the _thing_ under his bed. The Doctor watched, uninterested, Gormlaith curled up in his lap in a ball of striped fur. Rupert's daemon had taken the form of a young otter, and Eirian was wrapped around her, his chin resting on her head.

Finally, Clara was down to the last soldier – one whose gun had broken off at one point. "This," she told Rupert, "is the boss soldier, the colonel. He's going to keep a special eye out for you." She dug through the box of animals, pulling one out to go with the soldier without looking. "And this is his daemon. They'll both keep you safe." She placed the snarling orange tiger next to the broken soldier on Rupert's bed.

"That one's broken," Rupert protested. "He doesn't have a gun."

Clara shook her head. "That's why he's the boss. A soldier so brave that he doesn't need a gun." She hoped the Doctor was paying attention to this; she knew about his hatred of soldiers, but she wanted him to see that not all of them were bad. Like Danny. "Now. What should we call him?"

"Dan."

She'd been wondering ever since the beginning if _this_ was a younger Danny, if he'd grown up all alone in a children's home. The coincidences were growing too strange to be just that – and if there was one thing she'd learnt travelling with the Doctor, it was that if something was too strange to be a coincidence, then it usually wasn't one at all. Clara and Eirian exchanged glances. "Sorry?" she asked.

"Dan the soldier man. That's what I call him."

"And his daemon can be Matilda," Rupert's daemon added, her tone sleepier now. "Like me." 

No. No, this wasn't happening. Clara refused to believe that she was interfering with Danny's childhood like this; it was probably breaking every single rule of time travel. For all she knew, she'd create one of those massive space-time paradoxes the Doctor was always talking about and rip apart all of time and space, all because stupid Danny Pink had called her while she was telepathically slaved to the TARDIS.

"Right, yeah," she agreed numbly. "Good names."

"Will you read us a story?" Rupert asked plaintively as he settled back under the covers – the ones that were left, anyway. "It'll help us get to sleep."

The Doctor sighed as he leaned over, touching Rupert's forehead. "Once upon a time-" 

And Rupert fell sound asleep before the Doctor could even finish the sentence.

"The end." He gave Clara an amused look. "Dad skills," he explained, picking Gormlaith up and setting her on the floor. Eirian carefully disentangled himself from Rupert's daemon, jumping back to the floor from the bed, his claws skittering on the hard wood.

"Do you think he'll remember us?" she asked as they walked through the corridors. Danny certainly hadn't acted like he had ever remembered her from his childhood.

The Doctor shook his head. "Nah. Scrambled his memories, gave him a big old dream about being Dan the Soldier Man. He won't remember a thing."

Clara stopped dead in her tracks for a moment, her eyes wide with shock. Rupert had _become_ Dan the soldier man, right down to his daemon. She'd never questioned Matilda being a tiger; sure, it was wholly incongruous for a maths teacher to have a daemon like that, but it fit a former soldier perfectly. And now she knew that it was all because of her, that she'd driven him to become a soldier and, indirectly, caused the trauma that she'd seen affect him whenever he talked about his previous life.

The Doctor had kept walking, Gormlaith trotting at his heels, but he stopped for a moment when he realised Clara was no longer with him. "Is something the matter? Why've you stopped?"

"Everything's fine," Clara replied automatically, even though she couldn't shake the feeling that things were most definitely not fine. She'd ruined Danny's life without meaning to, and they hadn't even got through their first date. She picked up Eirian before she started walking again, lengthening her strides to catch up to the Doctor. She remained one step behind him, though, so he couldn't see the tears streaming down her face and splashing onto Eirian's fur. "Look, Doctor, do you think you could do me a favour?"

 

***

 

"What's your name now, anyway?" The Doctor directed the question at Missy's daemon, who was perched on her shoulder and eyeing the fake cherries on her hat. The Master's daemon had kept the same name through several regenerations, unlike his own, but if the Master was Missy now, it stood to reason that her daemon was no longer Morena. They had real names, of course, but like the Time Lords, their names had been discarded long ago; it was simpler to use shorter names that weren't Gallifreyan in origin.

"Bert," he replied, cocking his head to look at the Doctor. He fluttered from her shoulder to the floor, standing face to face with the Doctor's daemon.

"Gormlaith," she introduced herself, her tone cold and her fur bristling.

"Well, isn't this a _lovely_ reunion?" Missy drawled. "Even with the handcuffs – have you ever noticed how often I end up bound in your presence? It's a bit – mmm – stimulating, don't you think?" She arched one perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. "Of course, I'm sure you've got better things to do than spend time with little ol' me, _Mister President_." 

"I've always wondered," he said conversationally, "why you still have a daemon."

"Do you expect me to be like a Dalek?" She sneered elegantly.

"Soulless, you mean?" The Doctor shrugged, his answer evident in the gesture – or what he wanted her to think it was, anyway. It was a return to the theological conversation he'd had with Clara; he couldn't help but feel that as long as Missy had a daemon, there might be something left to redeem. "I just thought it didn't make much scientific sense, with all the times you've died." Not to mention the time the Master had stolen Tremas's body, and the time he'd become a strange snakelike creature, and the time his botched resurrection had left him- well, he wasn't sure how to categorise that one.

"Sorry to disappoint." Her red lips twisted in disgust. "I'm sure the Rani would love to make a study of it, though. Perhaps I'll see if she's there the next time I'm on Gallifrey – or not. I've never fancied being one of her lab rats. Bert!" she snapped suddenly; the raven had finally stolen one of her plastic cherries and was holding it in his beak, clearly disappointed the fruit was fake. "How many times have I _told_ you?"

He opened his beak, letting the cherry fall to the floor with a clatter. The Doctor eyed it suspiciously, half expecting it to start emitting some sort of sleeping gas; it was just the kind of strange plan he expected from the Master. The cherry was just a cherry, though, as far as he could tell. "Seventy-three," he replied in a croaking voice. "Fifty-four for the blueberries, and twelve for the flowers." 

"I should have figured it out sooner," the Doctor muttered. "You were the only one down there with a daemon. 'Hard-light hologram', honestly, I should have seen through that shoddy excuse in a heartbeat."

"You always have been fond of denial, Doctor." Missy smirked at him. "Why, you might as well move to Egypt."

"I don't know if I can stay down here if you're going to make such terrible puns." The Doctor made a face. This was going about as well as every other reunion he'd had with the Master, which was to say, not at all. Besides, he ostensibly had work to do – which was more of an argument in favour of staying and bantering with the Master than returning to the boardroom where people would expect him to be all...Presidential.

"The terrible puns are your job," Gormlaith snorted, finally relaxing a little. "Bolt hole, remember that one? Not to mention every other pun you've made since you regenerated."

"Two birds of a feather, aren't they?" Bert said to her, craning his head to peer down at her from Missy's shoulder. "No matter how hard they try to deny it." It almost sounded companionable for a moment, reminiscent of a time when the two daemons – and their Time Lords – had been closer. 

"Who said anything about denying it?" Missy turned her head to look at her daemon. "I've always known that we're more alike than _he_ wants to admit."

The Doctor shook his head, frowning. Maybe he wasn't a good man, but he wasn't the Master, either; he didn't kill for sport, didn't delight in the pain he caused others. All the deaths he'd caused wore at his conscience, like chains bearing him down. "I'm going back up," he said abruptly, stooping to pick Gormlaith up. "Enjoy your flight, Missy."

"Oh, I will." She paused for effect. "But will _you_?"

***

"You're an idiot," Gormlaith said bluntly.

"I admitted that, didn't I?" The Doctor stared down at the console; he couldn't bring himself to dematerialise. It had a feeling of finality about it, of accepting that Clara no longer had room in her life for a daft Time Lord with a blue box.

She sniffed derisively. That was the problem with daemons, the Doctor thought. In the end, you got treated with condescension by an animal that didn't even stand as high as your knees. Of course, Jung would have argued that it was simply a manifestation of the self-loathing he already felt, but that was one of the many reasons why the Doctor had never been able to stand psychologists. (He didn't even want to think what Freud might have said about it.)

"Is this about believing Missy?" Because he'd already done more than enough self-flagellation over that particular bit of stupidity, and he didn't need Gormlaith rubbing his nose in it any further.

"No. You know now you shouldn't have done it, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn't it? You wanted to trust her, wanted to believe that finding Gallifrey could be that simple, that for once, she might be telling you the truth. And she knew that you wanted to trust her, so it was easy enough for her to manipulate you. Foolish, maybe, but I wouldn't call you an idiot for doing it, just an optimist," Gormlaith said wryly. They both knew that he wasn't much of an optimist this time around.

"Do you think she meant it when she said she wanted her friend back?" He remembered when they'd been friends all too well, with a clarity that almost hurt sometimes. When he'd thought Gallifrey lost forever, along with the other Time Lords – even the Master – he'd dwelled on those days spent in the fields of red grass, the explorations into every nook and cranny of the Academy. He remembered his best friend – but the Master, regardless of the shape he took, was no longer his best friend. Even if he managed to fix the Master somehow, remove the drums from his head, he – or she – wouldn't be the same person, no more than the Doctor could ever be the same person he'd been all those years ago.

"I think it's possible that even Missy could be lonely," she replied carefully. "She's always sought you out, whatever the reason. I don't think she would ever try to repair the damage done between you – and I don't think she's capable of having _friends_. Not an outright lie, like most of what she said, but hardly the truth."

"She wasn't lying when she said that I was like her." The Doctor ran his fingers over a few of the instruments on the console. The TARDIS had removed the scorch marks, and the metal gleamed like new, but she couldn't erase the devastation he'd felt at opening the TARDIS doors onto empty, desolate space. 

"It was her interpretation of events. You aren't like her, and you don't need me to tell you that to know it." Gormlaith sounded bossy – almost like Clara, he thought. Either he was a sentimental old fool, or his daemon had taken her as a role model (or quite possibly both). "You remember the conversation the two of you had about the destruction of Gallifrey, back when he was Harold Saxon. He was fascinated by it – by how it felt to eliminate two entire species with the press of a button."

"I do." The Master had sounded enthralled, almost enamoured by the thought. Of course, genocide was probably one of his favourite things in the entire universe, the Doctor thought. 

"That's the difference between the two of you, and that's why, no matter what sort of man – or woman - you are, you'll never be like the Master." Her tone was matter of fact, but they both knew how much Missy's comparison had bothered him, how he'd spent long hours debating the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she'd been right. (It was a thought he couldn't have afforded to entertain at the time, not with everything that was at risk, but in the long, dark hours of the night, when he was alone and awake, when the consequences of his impossible decisions weighed the heaviest, it came back to haunt him.) "Your greatest strength is what the Master would consider your greatest weakness – hold on, did I crib that line from Dumbledore?"

"Might've done." 

"There are worse people to quote." She gave a badgerish shrug. "Or paraphrase, anyway."

"Back to the original topic at hand-" and before Gormlaith decided to turn his entire life into a Harry Potter allegory, "-why'm I an idiot?"

"I'm not going to tell you if you don't already know." Her tone was definitely Clara-ish this time. "You ought to have been able to work it out on your own. Maybe you should have paid more attention to Eirian while you were talking earlier."

"What?" He furrowed his brow. "This is about Clara?"

"Of course it's about Clara," she huffed. "Can't you keep up, Doctor?"

"Obviously I can't." He leaned against the console. 

"Well, then, you'd best start trying harder." 

The Doctor turned on his heel, putting his back to Gormlaith as he began to set coordinates. The conversation had quickly turned irritating; he wasn't sure why she felt the need to – there was no avoiding the pun - _badger_ him about it if she wasn't going to tell him why she felt he was an idiot. It just gave her an air of smug superiority that worked its way under his skin to annoy him. Of course he hadn't wanted to leave Clara – to lie to her and tell her that he was going to go back home and make Gallifrey better – but he'd done it so that she could stay and enjoy her life with Danny without worrying about him all the time. How he felt about it was irrelevant; Clara deserved a better life, a _normal_ life – the sort of life she could never have if she kept travelling with him. He would recover from the loss in time; he always did.

"You aren't going to go sulk on a cloud this time, are you? I don't think I could stand sulking on a cloud."

"Do I _seem_ like the sort to go sulk on a cloud?" he retorted, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessary. He didn't want to be reminded of his previous behaviour; though it seemed overly melodramatic now, he'd been deeply affected by losing the Ponds at the time, and Thalassia had agreed with his decision. But he wasn't the same man, and Gormlaith wasn't Thalassia, and Clara was still alive and well and happy.

"Or with otters. No otters."

Of course not. Otters would just remind him of Clara and Eirian, a fact he was sure Gormlaith knew. "Maybe badgers," he offered, his tone slightly acerbic.

"I think that sounds like an excellent idea, actually. Highly sensible creatures, badgers. Not that I'm biased."

"I haven't got any plans for sulking, actually." He wrenched a lever down, and the time rotor began to rise and fall as they dematerialised. 

"You never have any plans at all," she pointed out. "That's hardly anything new."

"No," he agreed, "but I'm sure we'll manage to find something out there that needs our attention. We always do." He would keep on living his life, and Clara would keep on living hers, even if their paths never crossed again.


End file.
